Épopée

Canada

Épopée is a cinema action group based in Montreal, which carries out projects addressing present-day situations. The group disseminates its work through public talks and discussions, web distribution and art gallery installations. Since 2005, Épopée has focused on persons subjected to exclusion by the State and violence by its police. The group has created film projects in collaboration with sex workers and drug users, students and militants during and after the 2012 Québec Student Strike, and lately with a group of Yanomami in the Brazilian Amazon.

Épopée emerged spontaneously between 2005 and 2007 in the course of filming the documentary Hommes à louer (Men for Sale, 2008), which deals with drug use and male sex workers. Fed up with being documented, the participants made clear their desire to create fictions. The project started with writing workshops that transformed into a website (epopee.me) with short films written and acted out by the participants. An installation, L'État des lieux (The State of Things, 2012), three feature films, L’État du moment (The State of the Moment, 2012), L’État du monde (The State of the World, 2012), and L'Amour au temps de la guerre civile (Love in the Time of Civil War, 2014), came out of the sex workers project.